A MODERN READER #3: Extreme Solitude

I have largely avoided TheNew Yorker’s Fiction section. The stories were about aging women who lived on Cape Cod, or they were set in developing countries. I don’t want to name names, but you know what I’m talking about, the style sometimes described as “suburban malaise.” Those types of stories appeal to the New Yorker demographic, I’m sure, and they have merit. But as I wade through the swamp of available reading material, it never rises to the top. Maybe it’s a product of placement. After an exhausting profile of Haim Saban, an influential Zionist, or a reporter-at-large about Richard Holbrooke, ambassador to Afghanistan,who has the energy to read a piece of literary fiction?

A few important Internet notes before I begin: Our friends at The Millions have taken up New Yorker Fiction, including an excellent quantitative summary of years of New Yorker Fiction. Andrew Leland discusses an A.M. Homes story that “seems aware of itself as ‘a New Yorker story.’” Just so you know, I’ve been thinking about those analyses, maybe you should, too.

**

In the May 10th issue, Dagoberto Gilb’s “Uncle Rock” caught me off guard. Dense with detail, the story captures the world of an alert young boy. I said to myself, “That was a great story. Maybe you should start reading New Yorker fiction, again.”

Franzen’s “Agreeable” (May 31) falls comfortably into the “suburban malaise” category. But it is exquisite suburban malaise. Patty—such a sad, apt name for our protagonist—is the outcast of her suburban family, “Not actually dumb but relatively dumber” than her siblings. When a boy from a wealthy, influential family rapes her, her parents refuse to let her press charges. No, they don’t refuse. Refusal would be too overtly cruel. The cruelty of this liberal Westchester family is so quiet, so subtle. Her dad calls him “a rotten little shit” in the same breath as he asks Patty if she really knows what rape is. She says, “You’re not really on my side, are you.” It’s not a question but a statement. This story is an excerpt from Franzen’s forthcoming novel, Freedom, which I am very excited to read. (I haven’t read The Corrections—one of many contemporary reading sins I will confess to in the lines of this column.)

Jeffrey Eugenides’s “Extreme Solitude” occupies a sub-genre of “suburban malaise” that I call “Ivy League musings.” Embodied by Salinger’s Franny and Zooey, this style features attractive young people with unusual names going to the “Yale game” and reading difficult texts. (Franny and Zooey debuted in The New Yorker in 1961.) Eugendies’s Madeleine and Leonard are at Brown in the 80s; they are reading Barthes and Derrida, not Flaubert.

I loved this story. Yeah, it is unabashed about going to Cape Cod and the Berkshires. I’ve been that co-ed who goes to Gloucester for the Fourth of July. There were sailboats and New England farmhouses, and it was wonderful—maybe in part because it was clichéd.

I’m fully aware that this argument leads to unhealthy elitism, but I value a common intellectual heritage. When Eugenides’s Madeleine laughs at Cheever and Updike “in favor of reading the Marquis de Sade,” I’m laughing with her. The story includes lengthy excerpts from Barthes’s “A Lover’s Discourse.” As I read the story on the thin, glossy pages, I remembered reading “The Death of the Author” and rereading it and rereading it. As a fictional mode, the direct reference is risky, especially one that relies on the referent, not on the context. Barthes says, and Eugenides, and now I, quote: “The necessity for this book is to be found in the following consideration: that the lover’s discourse is today of an extreme solitude.”

Madeleine goes on to have the same epiphany I had when reading Barthes, and now again when reading Eugenides’s story: “Here was a sign that she wasn’t alone. Here was an articulation of what she had been so far mutely feeling. In bed on a Friday night, wearing sweatpants and eating peanut butter from a jar, Madeleine was in a state of extreme solitude.”

The New Yorker’s Fiction Issue caused quite a ruckus in the New York Times, here at The Rumpus, and even abroad. It was great, duh. The magazine explains its choices in a smart introduction with healthy (comforting) caveats: “The habit of list-making can seem arbitrary or absurd.” They go on to mention that the arbitrary age limit exempted at least two authors that may otherwise have been included (Dave Eggers and Colson Whitehead), and other erroneous exigencies excluded potential writers. According to its Editors, the list offers “a focussed look at the talent sprouting and blooming around us.” (I’m sure they did not mean “around us” literally, but ten of the writers reside in New York City.) The Fiction Issue features stories by eight of these writers. The summer will be full of fiction, twelve more stories by each of the others to be published in successive installments.

I’ve been parsing my changing attitude toward this venerable institution. It would be absurd to suggest that TheNew Yorker started publishing good stories last month. They have been doing it for more than 80 years! That means I am the least common denominator, or the common multiple, or variable, or something.

The rebellious teenager inside me resists this newfound excitement for New Yorker stories. I’m turning into the high-school English teacher of my imagination, into someone’s hip mom. Or, like Madeleine, in extreme solitude whilst realizing I am not alone, I am turning into myself.

M. Rebekah Otto lives in Berkeley, CA. She grew up in Chicago. Her current interests include her new nine-to-five, vintage wallpaper, and Evan S. Connell. Also, she's the former Books Editor of the Rumpus.
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15 Responses to “A MODERN READER #3: Extreme Solitude”

I liked this essay, and I love its implication that people on both sides of the conventional/experimental divide can find great stuff across the border. The divide, if it’s meaningful, lies in the writing, not the reading. Good is good.

Are we forgetting that one of the stories in the NYer fiction issue could reasonably be considered experimental, and not their typical fare: the Jonathan Safran Foer piece. It’s too bad it sucked so terribly, and in my opinion stained an otherwise fine group of stories (not because it was experimental, or convention-bending, but because it was just bad). I usually hang out on the conventional side of the border, but am always eager to read good stuff from the other side. Too bad they couldn’t have found something better– actually, I have little doubt they could have. Too bad they didn’t.

Sai – I think you’re right that those are a bit conflated in my intro. I should have been clearer about how both styles play to the ‘typical’ New Yorker reader.

Also, the excellent Jennifer Egan story from a few months ago displays a combination of these two – a group of wealthy white folks on safari.
Within the confines of this particular magazine, neither the experimental traditions in the Atlantic/Australia belt nor those outside of it are often put in the spotlight, in my opinion.

“Set in developing countries” = “suburban malaise”?
These two sentences together had me flummoxed. Don’t get me wrong – I don’t think anyone has to necessarily like stories set in developing countries, but exactly when did developing country fiction become a sub-genre of suburban malaise?

Seems to me there’s a pretty huge gap between Rushdie and Adichie, and there’s all sorts of experimental/radical work going on outside the Atlantic/ Australia belt. Surely we can do better than blanket statements of this sort, even when talking about NYer fiction?

zz packer’s story was epic. i read it on a flight to north carolina last week, my first real trip to the south (other than mardi gras, which when it is occurring is not really the south but something else entirely). it set a tone for the rest of my trip. and i felt that the bones and ghosts of the place came alive. that would not have happened for me otherwise. that being said it is the exception to the rule perhaps, as the story was clearly not about white suburbanites, either in malaise or eating mayonnaise, nor did it take place in the northeast.

I also greatly enjoyed this essay and want to amplify Evelyn Walsh above: John Cheever, the prototypical “New Yorker writer”, was not a “New Yorker writer” at all. He was one of our great lyrical surrealists. If you haven’t read him, or haven’t in a long time, I recommend people read “The Day the Pig Fell Into the Well.” It’s one of the most stunning and enriching stories I’ve ever read. (But yeah, I know we’re getting far afield of the main thrust of your essay, which, again, is a very engaging read. I haven’t checked out the fiction issue and don’t subscribe to the magazine any longer.)

Some musings on Cheever: yes, the suburban malaise. But part of Cheever’s power is that he also captures the pleasures of that particular world so beautifully and sets it off against the malaise to such great effect.

And he certainly broke out of the “conventional” into the “experimental” in many stories.

But then I’m a little wary of making certain distinctions between the conventional and the experimental…

Kevin, I think you bring up a good point. I agree that Eugendies and Franzen could be contemporary parallels to Updike and Cheever. I didn’t mean to criticize Updike/Cheever for being the types of writers that they are/were. Also, to me, their content (Updike’s chauvinism), not just their style, are significant.

Part of my struggle with New Yorker Fiction as a whole is the polarization of experimental writers and the typically staid conventions of the New Yorker. I am still coming to grips with the contradiction of loving experimental writers – see last month’s Mondern Reader about Ugly Duckling Presse – while loving conventional fiction. Or, more accurately, being surprised that I was taken in by conventional fiction at all.

franzen’s story reminded me of a george lucas quote, something to the effect of, it’s easy to get an emotional response from an audience, just strangle a cat. i personally thought the story had all the subtlety of a george lucas film, too. limousine liberals are straw men — it’s easy to write a franken-mom caricature — and the parental reaction to the rape felt like a setup, a set-piece, almost a cheap parody of that brand of social critique. and beating up on young girls is kind of, well, abusive. the eugenides story i liked much better, it seemed to have ears and a nose and a heart, even though it was a bit boarding-school-follies. write what you know, i guess.

In the 1990’s, I can imagine Patty and Madeleine at the same PTA meeting, driving up their Volvo’s or Saabs, like the beginning of White Noise. They are creatures in the same suburban universe.

The thing about the Eugenides story is that the word “Semiotics” jumps off the page in the second paragraph like a loaded gun. The moment it appears, one knows the story is set at Brown, which should have it’s own sub-sub-genre under Ivy League musings.

I’m curious about this. Not so much to criticize as to raise a discussion, but isn’t lauding Eugenides/Franzen, in the stead of some unnamed young-gun experimentalist, let’s say, today’s equal of lauding Updike/Cheever? That underhanded dig at U/C in the essay really confused me. I mean, E/F definitely aren’t exploring the same chauvinistic visions of the nation’s Massachusettses as U/C did, but they’re far from textual revolutionaries—as anyone who’s read any of Franzen’s criticism knows far too well (I’m less familiar with Eugenides, though [I started Extreme Solitude but got bored quickly]).

Also, I definitely didn’t think the New Yorker’s Fiction 20/40 was great.

Definitely liked the essay, and it’s a cool realization to have, but any other opinions re: these questions?

I agree, though I would also nominate the recent Englander story — and the less recent Jennifer Egan story, the one that turns out to be an excerpt from her novel “the Good Squad” — for consideration. Those, as well as the ones you mentioned, hit me harder than anything in the Fiction issue except ZZ Packer’s piece.

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